GROUNDLING 3: THE TAKING OF NAMES
by ardavenport
- - - Part 1
Cook Tamira stomped in late without a word and not a glance at the stoked fires, the baskets of fruit and berries, the eggs, meats, the clean bowls and utensils ready to start. Onie Thatcher sighed, unimpressed. The two Herald-Trainees helping with breakfast exchanged nervous looks and continued stacking the dishes on the dumb-waiter to winch up to the common room above.
Onie got the cleaver and knives out and started on the bacon and ham. Tamira wasn't going to be wielding any sharp implements this morning. No one thought that she would ever hurt anyone, but Onie could see it in Tamira's eyes. Her motions, her whole body radiated the desire to make someone else suffer and hurt when she was angry. And with Cook Tamira it was always the same thing that made her blood boil, her family, particularly her parents. Cook lived in their small house in Haven. Old and infirm, her parents lived mostly on the charity of their children and a drunken lodger in their attic. And apparently Tamira had inherited her bad temper because anyone who had met her parents, sister or brother reported that they were among the most unpleasant people they had ever dealt with.
At first, Onie had wondered why the Collegium would put up with anyone who so regularly spread such ill-will around whenever she had a fight with her relatives. But the answer became clear as Onie settled into her Herald training along with her assigned chores at the Collegium. When Tamira was angry, she threw herself totally into her work. The joke in the Common Room was that if there was a storm down below there was a feast up above.
As her first summer in Haven turned to fall, Onie had improved her kitchen skills ten-fold just from watching and working for Tamira. She sometimes felt like she learned as much about food and cooking as she did about Heralding upstairs. Her letters back to her home village were filled with recipes and instructions about proper oils and spices, marinades and pastries. At first Onie's chores had been split between sewing and repairing and the kitchen. But all the other Herald-Trainees noticed very quickly that the oldest Herald-Trainee in the Collegium would hold her ground on Cook's bad days. They would not only offer to trade their kitchen-duty for her sewing, some would offer their chore-hours for hers two-for-one. Housekeeper Gaytha rearranged the schedules so that all of Onie's chores were in the kitchen. It wasn't much to Onie's liking but she liked seeing the big woman bullying shy twelve-year-olds even less.
Tamira emerged from her office minus her wool cloak, her dark, limp hair covered with her usual white scarf, a clean apron over her patched gray and brown dress. She got a bowl and flour and started taking out her anger on the eggs for the flat-cake batter. One of the Trainees started filling pots for boiling water while another hurried to get the butter and oats. They followed Onie's example of silently sticking to their duties and not giving Tamira any opportunity to use her sharp tongue. They all knew their jobs.
Soon, the butter and meat were snapping and crackling in the pans followed by the flat cakes. The fruit was sliced and loaded into bowls with the berries. They had the platters nearly full and ready to winch upstairs when one of the Trainees, a young boy named Clem suddenly started and nearly dropped a platter of cheese and bread on the side board next to the dumb waiter. Tamira glared at him crossly, but Onie knew that look.
His Companion was speaking to him.
She put a platter of eggs and meat down, pulled out her spectacles from their leather case in an inside pocket, put them on and stood on a chair, looking out the high window at ground level into the gardens outside and saw many, many slender white legs and silver hooves. The Companions. . . .
"Aaay!" Tamira shouted after them, but her three helpers were already out the door, heading for the stairwell at a run. Upstairs, other Herald-Trainees poured down from upstairs as well, the older ones and a few Heralds in Whites pelting past the classrooms to the outer doors.
The crowd of Heralds and Trainees matched the sea of white filling the garden. The Companions, ALL the Companions it seemed filled the pathways, the bridge to Companion's Field, heads high, whinnying and stamping their feet.
A Companion screamed and all heads turned toward the gate out of the Palace and Collegium grounds.
"Let him out! Let him out!" Two Heralds, one man without a shirt on, ran toward a shocked guard in blue. The gate opened and three Companions escaped. One was Rolan, the Companion of the Queen's Own, but Onie did not know the other two. Onie could read the expressions in the wild eyes of the Companions and Chosen.
This was a Choosing, but a special Choosing in a very different - frightening? - way.
Herald-Trainees and Heralds started to filter into the sea of white horse-bodies and Onie looked for her own Lillis. He Ground-Gift gave her the direction and after pushing past brilliant white heads, flanks, shoulders and tails, she spotted Lillis's blue eyes in the crowd.
"Wha' kind'a Choosin' is this?"
Lillis's frightened whinny worried that the Companion might be too late to reach his Chosen, a dire prospect.
"Who's Choosin'?"
Herald Gregri, who had only recently gotten his Whites, stood with his own Companion, Undra, his plain features pale. "It's Hyer. He's Choosing. And his new Chosen's in danger."
"I don' know tha' one 'o tha Companions."
Gregri shook his head. "You wouldn't. You hardly ever see him. He never leaves Companion's Field." He gulped and steadied himself, his hand on Undra's neck; she touched her nose to his side. "He's Chosen before; years before I was. But his Chosen . . . he died."
Onie's eyes went wide. Next to her, Lillis nodded.
"He was young and sickly, a boy named Ador Mairdin and he was a powerful FarSeer. Some say that was why he was small and weak; it took too much out of him. And one winter, he caught a fever and the Healers couldn't save him. But on his death bed, he begged Hyer to live and that his new Chosen would need him when the time came." Undra nuzzled his cheek and his hand went up to touch her cheek. "So Hyer lived, though some say he nearly wasted away from mourning for Ador."
"I never heared about no Companion livin' past'is Chosen."
Gregri gave her a half grin. "The Bards sang plenty of odes about it. But the songs were so sad, a lot of people didn't care to hear them more than once. Some Heralds wouldn't stay in the room to hear them at all."
All around them, Chosen and Companions were finding each other, some just for a look and a reassuring pat, others for heartfelt hugs. And there were a number of un-partnered Companions, eying the reunions speculatively. Soon enough the instructors from the Collegium and some of the senior Heralds started calling for everyone to go back inside and the Companions herded themselves back toward the bridge.
Lillis whuffed into Onie's hair and her hand slipped through the soft fine hairs of her white mane as her Companion turned to leave with the rest. A few Heralds sat bare-back, going with them to Companions Field. Many people dawdled, watching them go and more than a few Companions turned sapphire eyes back for a last look.
Onie went back to the Collegium and back down the stairs to the kitchen. Surprisingly, the seriousness of what had happened seemed to have cooled Cook's anger. She didn't say anything about it and there was real sympathy in her eyes as they winched up the platters of food to the Common Room. The rest of breakfast was uneventful. The food went up and the plates, platters and pitchers came back empty. None of the other Herald-Trainees in the kitchen knew much about Ador and Hyer, other than the minimum. Ador had died before any of them were even born, let alone Chosen. How many years had Hyer been waiting for his new Chosen? They spoke in reverent tones the little they knew about Hyer, as if he were a scary legend in Companion's Field that was only spoken about late at night over a campfire.
They all ate quickly and soon enough, Onie put away her apron and went to her room to prepare for her first class, Valdemar History.
When she arrived at the classroom upstairs, the usual pre-class chatter was subdued, even among the non-Herald students. Everyone knew about Hyer's Choosing. Valdemar History was taught to all students at the Collegium, so the class was a mix of Herald-Trainess, Healer-Trainees, Bard-Trainees, and Unaffiliated Blue students (either the children of the highborn or sponsored scholars). Onie nodded to a few friends, but hurried toward where one particular Unaffiliated boy had already taken a seat at a front long table in the classroom.
He looked no older than fourteen and he had arrived just after Harvest Festival. His name was Roston Jestren and he was a younger son of some highborn family from the north and sent down to Haven to learn from his cousin about the trade in the produce from the family estate. They had chatted a few times and shared a couple of study sessions with a group of others who had trouble making sense of the histories, laws and the jumble of names and places on the maps that they were all expected to know. He did not seem very interested in any of his classes, which was not unusual for one of the Blues. Often they were the offspring of the highborn who were thrust into an education by parents who expected them to do more than hang about with their friends at taverns. But this boy did not seem to be one of those. He did not complain about his parents wanting him to 'better himself'; he never mentioned his family at all except for his older cousin in town. Onie always saw him come and go from class alone. He always seemed tense and watchful and he had no friends that she had seen.
She sensed that he was interested in her. If she did not sit next to him, he seemed to find a way to sit next to her. And he would most often initiate a conversation, usually some shared sympathy about their classes or speculation about when first snow would be, a perpetual seasonal interest for the whole of Valdemar. Possibly he was interested in knowing a Herald in general though she wasn't sure if it was just curiosity or if he thought she might bring him status or more friends.
Onie was certainly interested in him. Because in every way, in body and face, he looked exactly like an older version of Onie Thatcher's nephew, her sister's fatherless son, Sami.
- - - End Part 1